I have just started reading, ‘Radical Together,’ David Platt’s second eagerly read-only-to-be-completely-ignored book.

Picking out a few quotes from the first chapter, maybe you can see why.

The Gospel compels the church to go to God with everything we have and everything we do and then ask, “What needs to go? What needs to change? What needs to stay the same?”

And then we wait for God to answer.

In my own personal experience, across the board, the concept of waiting for God to answer-heck, even the act of truly submitting an issue to the Lord-has been an enormous sticking point for church leadership. There is such a narrow range within which we have permitted Him to answer our demands, that the tension and impatience with which we pray becomes palpable. The idea of adopting an attitude of submission before a sovereign God AND then deigning to wait on the Lord for an answer (and one that may not fit into our way of doing things) is a bridge too far, David Platt!

Obviously, the previous paragraph was dripping with Pauline inspired sarcasm in order to demonstrate the ridiculousness of our attitudes before the Lord. We’ll trust the Lord with our eternal soul (probably because that is an abstract concept to us) but we won’t extend the same trust with our finances, health, and vocation? Not only trust, but to go so far as to submit those things?

Are you willing to ponder how for reaching that submission would be? David pushes forward a bit more;

A church is a community of individuals who have lost their lives to follow Christ. Surely it flows from this that we would be willing to lose our programs and our preferences, to sacrifice our budgets and buildings, to let go of our most cherished legacies and reputation if there is a better way to make His glory known in the world.

Personally, I am starting to believe that people read David Platt (and Francis Chan) for the same reason they read ghost stories or watch horror movies; they want to be scared-safely, vicariously, but ultimately, without commitment.

Christian voyeurism.

I’ll close out chapter one of ‘Radical Together’ with this excerpt;

For us, the flood depicts the radical call of Christ to Christians and the church. When Jesus calls us to abandon everything we have and everything we are, it’s almost as if he is daring us to put ourselves in the flood plain. To put all our lives and all our churches, all our property and all our possessions, all our plans and all our strategies, all our hopes and all our dreams in front of the levee and then ask God to break it. To ask God to sweep away whatever he wants, to leave standing whatever he desires, and to remake our lives and churches according to his will.

I call it the radical non-radical step of obedience. We have gotten to the point in modern Christianity where faith and obedience are new concepts that have to be sold, never posited (despite the overwhelming Biblical evidence), as something we should engage in.

Oh but the blessings and joy when you do, Poppets!

While I seem to be playing ‘bad cop’ in this post, my purpose is to encourage you to think and pray about this. Do a little contrast and compare with your life and local church body to the accounts we see in Scripture. If you are confronted with an obvious difference, take a step of faith and submit it to the Lord in prayer.

Watch what happens.